Enemy Has Audacity To Spare And A Top-Notch Jake Gyllenhaal Performance To Spare

Unless you're Jan de Bont or Simon Kinberg, blockbuster movie directors don't start their directorial careers helming big-budget features. Usually, they kick off their filmographies with smaller-scale tales that depart heavily in tone and genre from the blockbusters they'd eventually helm. Jon Watts, for instance, directed the small-scale thriller Cop Car before moving on to helm the MCU Spider-Man movies and Peter Jackson directed foul-mouthed horny puppets before he directed the epic fantasy movies Lord of the Rings. So it is with Denis Villeneuve, who is in the middle of directing a massively expensive adaptation of the sci-fi epic Dune, but just five years ago directed the highly unorthodox thriller Enemy.

Thoughtfulness And Gorgeous Visuals Are Very Much In Supply With Blade Runner 2049 (SPOILERS!!!!)

Discussing Blade Runner 2049 in any kind of detail requires spoilers, so be forewarned, this entire review is lathered in spoilers. Want a spoiler-free reaction to the movie? Then I shall tell you this is a great movie with beautiful visuals and thoughtful ideas. If you want to hear me get more in-depth then that, then read on but BEWARE OF SPOILERS

Arrival Is An Excellent Demonstration Of The Power Of Visual Storytelling

We've had a lot of alien invasion movies over the decades, but the best ones are those that carve a distinct tone and perspective in their narrative, the movies that seek to do something more than just have aliens blow stuff up. Sometimes ya get the anarchic glee of Mars Attacks!, other times you get the post-9/11 allegories of War Of The Worlds. So what is Arrival's particular approach to the alien invasion subgenre? Intimacy, honestly. Just in the way the movies shot alone suggests a sense of the filmmakers wanting the audience to become familiar with its protagonist and connect with her on her journey of discovery.

Sicario Review

There are no easy answers to be found in Sicario and its examination of the War On Drugs, and believe you me, that's a good thing. It's lack of providing a concrete solution to this real life epidemic doesn't stem from a screenplay uninterested in providing a suitable resolution to its story. No, it's a symptom of the films bleak aesthetic depicting the ceaseless violence that's emerging from this conflict. There are no winners here, only people who miraculously survive one more day to continue the fight.